Quantus

Im still a huge fan of the Double Tin, because I think two slightly different Sensory increases would, I think, do a lot to mitigate the downsides. A-Tin grants sensory increase in all 5 normal senses, including low-light vision, but it's all or nothing and easy to fall to savantism. However, you could flair A-tin while filling 4 of 5 of your Tin-Minds and only ever have to worry about over-exposure to the sense you are actually looking for. Meanwhile Compounding means you never have to worry about being blind&deaf, etc while filling your Tin-Minds. As a Bonus: The Tin Twinborn Worldhopper goes to Nalthis, borrows a large supply of Breath for a single Day, and fills a Metalmind with Life-Sense. There-after, via compounding, the Twinborn has an unlimited supply of that Sense, long after they give the Breaths back.

Syl regressing away from sentience and being just aware enough of the process to be scared. Sazed finding the Wooden Disk on Clubs after... (Not sure why this one stands out in my mind). Elhokar not getting to finish his sentence. Vivenna when she realized how soundly she'd been manipulated, but the impact is severely diminished simply by me knowing how strong of a character she will grow in to.

Oh, so it's just a calculation of the time between him swearing the 1st and the 2nd ideals? I thought there might have been some new WOB that actually confirmed when his initial Bond first happened, which would have potentially nuked all those theories that Szeth had begun bonding back in his pre-Truthless days and regressed like Shalan, which would have been a big thing to get confirmed. Also, even though it's what the Coppermind says, I would have bet money that the Skybreaker test happened at A lake, but a mundane one rather than the Purelake itself.

Hell, I would frankly find it surprising if she actually knew how to create it, I've been operating under the (entirely unproven) assumption that Arsteel Yesteel or Vasher made it sometime post-Warbreaker. That feels like a stretch to me. If they were so devoted to that sort of Fairness interpretation of Honor (as opposed to the more Roshar-popular Honor=Oaths slant) I dont think they would be willing/able to engage in that sort of war of Conquest at all. If they would rather Not Fight than risk fighting an opponent with a tactical disadvantage, I figure they'd avoid open (and openly wasteful) warfare entirely and prefer settling that sort of thing via Dueling Champions or some ritualized alternative to War.

She did? I must have entirely missed that, when did it happen?

Huh?

Yes and no? Everything has an expression in Shadesmar, but it can take one of three (so far) forms: Spheres, Flames, and Formed Spren. In general Objects get spheres, Sapient Beings (Humans, Singers, etc) get Flames, and Spren that lack a permanent Physical Form get a native Cog Realm shape (city-dwelling spren, mandra's, sky-eals, etc). There may be more variations that we have not yet seen, but from what we have seen I think the two primary differentiators are first whether the thing has a native Physical Realm form (ie. Syl does not), and then sapience. If a think has no permanent Physical Realm form, they can be considered Shadesmar-Native spren, which need some Physical Realm anchor to manifest, even temporarily, which can be as transient as an emotion emanating from a person, or as permanent as the Nahel Bond. If they DO have a natural Physical Realm form, they divide along the Sapience Line: object-level awareness gets a Sphere while Persons get Flames. We know that Soulcasting works fine with Sphere-level objects, and we can safely assume it can work on a flame since Jasnah has soulcast living people. Im entirely unclear on If or How it would work against a manifest Shadesmar spren like Ico or even a Mandra, but I suspect it would fizzle since they have no Physical Form to 'reprogram'.

Nitpick: The WOB says he was unique among "Surgebinders and Kings" and specifically confirmed that Nohadon was not a Herald:

damnation, I did not realize a preview had bee released. Text or video? Do you happen to have a link?

I dont know the genre enough for a good example, but I feel like Szeth if going to be something on the Death Metal side of things, lots of white noise and death growls.

Just so Im clear, what "4th Prologue" are we talking about?

I disagree with that characterization entirely. Id say Marsh made it pretty clear that he's out there doing things Harmony does not approve of, and only gets away with it because Harmony is committed to his (mostly) Hand-off approach.

The old standby is to walk around with a bandage across your eyes, pretend to be blind, and then just try not to react too much as if you can see normally. Since he doesnt see all that normally, that might not be too hard. And soothing that sort of suspicion would be a lot easier than forced acceptance of a walking pincushion.

I took GLys's meaning to be light=Stormlight, but that could still indicate either surge. But so far his version of the illumination Surge hasnt shown any active effects like that, just the precognition. Prevailing theory Ive seen is based on the Voidbinding chart, which shows each of the orders having the same combined glyphs, but in the voidbinding version half of the glyph is inverted. The interpretation being that each true Voidbinder like Renarin will have one surge that acts the same as it's Radiant counterpart (progression for Renarin), and one that will be somehow different (Illumination for him).

Hmm... given the martial overtones of Valor, I think Valor=Honor + Devotion + Odium [+Ambition] Though I suppose it would all depend on the Host's interpretations of each.

The Identity isnt an issue, once you get spiked your identity shifts to encompass the new piece of spiritweb that's been grafted on. Your identity "muddies" the identity that came from the original user [WOB]

The way I took that WOB, and the specific way he qualified it, is simply that some Mental disorders, such as PTSD, are going to have Realmic components and/or symptoms in the cosmere, not because of any particular System of Investiture or "magic", but simply because of the way the three Realms interact. As far as a potential Original Purpose of Roshar, lets look at what we know of pre-Shattering Roshar: At one point it had no large landmass, then Adonalsium "grew" the Continent using a "seed" of Fractal math. Pre-shattering Roshar had Singers Pre-shattering Roshar had the Highstorm Pre-shattering Roshar had spren Pre-shattering Roshar had Stormlight-in-Gems Pre-shattering Roshar "there was a lot of natural evolution on Roshar, resulting in a lot of what we have there." [WOB] We also know that the abundance of Spren on Roshar act as a sort of realmic pressure relief, allowing the Investiture to flow more freely between realms than in places like Sel. Given that, if I had to guess What he was doing, Id say he was trying to build precisely that (a Realmic Pressure Relief). If I had to guess Why he was doing that though, Id make non-committal sounds and say "Maybe he was living there and it was helpful? Or maybe he was trying to fix the same problem that the Shatterers were trying to fix by Killing Him? Or maybe he was causing said problem via a spren-driven planetary machine (ie Roshar) and they killed him for it?

Yup, per WOB he has a bag of Atium beads (same one that KanPaar attempted to sell) and is confirmed to be compounding it to stay alive. Also, "A small bead used right can reverse age someone back to their childhood. WOB" His supply will run out eventually, and even if he had an infinite supply that sort of immortality has an absolute limit. Per WOB, the longer past your lifetime you are the more atium it takes to keep you alive, so eventually it would stop being effective. But Scadrial legitimately might make it to the stars first.

That's an interesting possibility. I dont think so? That sort of healing could theoretically fix cancer if it were from environmental sources but would/could struggle with innate/inborn things like genetic disorders. If it cant fix a genetic disorder or genetic cancer, I dont think it has enough re-write capability to give a person cancer that they never previously had, though if they'd treated it with drugs or surgery it might give it back. And a very subtle user of Soulcasting certainly could do it. Closest thing I see being possible would be to hardcore convince the target something was already true, to the point of changing their personal Identity to include it, then hit them with Progression, and you might be able to invent it. But we'd be talking about faking the illness in say a King and then (over the course of probably years) working him over such that the illness itself becomes a central aspect of his whole self-image and identity (which can happen). But there are far easier ways to kill a person.

Hell, at this point Im not 100% convinced it can be called anything so mundane as an edge. Once drawn it starts whooshing black smoke everywhere and vaporizes all matter it touches via mysterious trans-realmic annihilation. That's sounds a lot like a line-shaped, black-hole style perpendicularity that happens to be anchored to both sides of a metal bar. I picture less of a wedge of steel under that smoke and more of an open portal being waved around. I think we can safely say that however it works it is some kind of Investiture effect, or else the aluminum sheath would be no protection at all.

Im a little sad now, I was looking forward to kaladin's reaction when he saw Szeth with plate. Now odds are that Kaladin will get his first and undermine a lot of the comedy I was expecting.

Huh, I could have sworn those were separate scenes, I didnt remember them being back to back like that. EDIT: oh, wait, I think I had it wrong on the other side of things. According to OB ch. 90, a Skybreaker receives the rank of Master only After they fulfill their Crusade, and it was implied (as far as I can recall) that for skybreakers "Master"=4th ideal. So perhaps Szeth will receive the benefits of the 4th only after he completes his quest?

I dont have OB with me, but that was not my impression and that's not what the Coppermind says. According to it, Szeth's 4th was very specifically "I will cleanse the Shin of their false leaders, so long as Dalinar Kholin agrees." which led to a lot of discussion about what would happen if Dalinar said No, or worse if Dalinar died before he could make a decision, but the implication when it happened was that it was accepted by the spren as his 4th, and if Im not mistaken it still had the typical visual display that seems to happen when a radiant swears a new ideal.

Agreed. As far as I know nobody, including Nale, thought he'd be able to skip the Third Ideal, rather I think Nale expected him to swear the 2nd and 3rd more or less together, to be able to attract his own Highspren without having to spend any time as a Squire to another Skybreaker the way they typically do between their 2nd and 3rd ideals. Oh, OK. Not a typo, I definitely thought it was from later on when he swore the 4th Ideal to "cleanse" Shin. BUt if it happened at the 3rd when he swore to follow Dalinar, that makes sense too. I had thought it was after more verified Bond-time with the Highspren (ie post-3rd ideal), explaining the implied longer relationship

I disagree, though it's a subtle difference: TLR only died because he lost access to the Investiture that was facilitating the Change, it had nothing to do with his spiritual aspect overriding the Change. I dont see why it should function any differently than Compounded Gold to keep yourself alive, and if Miles can do that without having a whole and functioning Brain, I entirely think that subconscious, minimal tapping of an Atium-mind to avoid death should be possible. I much prefer this explanation. If there were Unconscious tapping involved, I could easily see it doing the absolute minimum to keep the person alive, as opposed to real, skill-based throttling of the ability.